Sphero RVR’s Quest For A Niche In Introductory Robotics

February 19, 2019 by 15 Comments

Thanks to internet commerce opening up a global marketplace, it is now easier than ever for a budding roboticist to get started. There are so many robot kits available, across such a wide range of price and sophistication, that deciding which one to buy becomes a challenging project in itself. Is there room for another product in the crowded introductory robotics market? Sphero believes so, and they’ve launched RVR to explore not just workshops and classrooms, but also to see if they can find a market niche.

At the low end of this market, we can go online and buy a super simple chassis – two small wheeled gear motors and a chassis plate of laser-cut acrylic – for pizza money. At the high end, we have robots that cost as much as a car. Sphero’s RVR slots somewhere above Wonder Workshop’s Dash, but below LEGO’s Mindstrom EV3. Products in this range are expected to take care of low-level motion control details, so beginners won’t get bogged down by things like PID tuning before their robot can drive in a straight line. Sphero engineers are certainly capable of hiding such annoying details from beginners, with their experience in consumer robotics.

But a big selling point here is completely opposite from closed-box consumer electronics: RVR is built to be extensible. Not with proprietary accessories & add-on kits like many of its competitors, but with the components we know and love on Hackaday pages: Raspberry Pi, micro:bit, and whatever else willing to communicate with RVR via its UART port and powered by RVR’s on board five volt power supply. Proper care and feeding of a lithium-ion battery is also one of the beginner-unfriendly details taken care of. But RVR isn’t finalized – one of the reason Sphero stated for launching via Kickstarter is to get customer feedback. Certainly the funding goal of $150,000 (easily met in a few hours) was unlikely to be the most important part for a company of Sphero’s size.

We hope RVR will help introduce a new audience to building their own robots. When they’re ready to grow beyond Sphero’s kit, Hackaday is happy to help show the way. If you have a 3D printer, there’s never been a better time to build your own robot. (Zerobot is on one editor’s to-do list.) Those fascinated by electronics can peek under the covers of low-level motor control, and there’s always room to explore high level machine vision and neural networks.

Whatever it takes to get you started, just get started!

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Building A 1.4W Laser Pointer In A Tiny Housing

February 19, 2019 by 37 Comments

Laser pointers were cool for about 30 seconds when they first came out, before becoming immediately passé and doing absolutely nothing to improve the boss’s quarterly reports presentation. However, just as with boom boxes and sports cars, more power can always make things better. [Styropyro] was unimpressed with the weak and unreliable laser pointers he’d sourced from eBay, so gutted one and began a fresh build.

After fiddling with some basic 1mW eBay green lasers, [styropyro] had some fun turning up the wick by fiddling with the internal trimpots. This led to the quick and untimely death of the cheap laser diodes, leaving a compact laser pointer shell ripe for the hacking.

To replace the underwhelming stock components, [styropyro] chose a Nichia NDG7475 high-powered laser diode, fitting it into a small heatsink for thermal management. Current draw was far too high to use the original switch, so the stock housing’s button is instead used to switch a MOSFET which delivers the full current to the laser driver. To reach the higher output power of 1.4W, the laser diode is being run over specification at 2.3 amps. All this current draw would quickly overwhelm standard AAA batteries, so a pair of lithium polymer 10440 batteries are substituted in to do the job.

The build shows that with clever parts selection and some easy hand soldering, you too can build an incredibly dangerous laser pointer at home, that fits neatly in your shirt pocket. Alternatively, you might prefer something on the larger scale. Video after the break.

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3D Printed Alarm Clock Looks Just Like Store Bought

February 19, 2019 by 17 Comments

Clocks are a popular project on Hackaday. They’re a great way to showcase a whole range of creative build techniques, and can make an excellent showpiece as well. We’ve seen everything from the blinkiest binary build to the noisiest alarms, but [Benoit] has delivered something different — a stylish build that looks like it came right off the store shelf.

The clock features a large 7-segment display built with IN-PI554FCH LEDs, which are similiar to the popular WS2812Bs but with lower power consumption. There’s also an OLED display for reading the date and going through menus, capacitive touch buttons for control and an Arduino Mega to tie everything together.

The real party piece is the enclosure, however. [Benoit] spent significant time honing a process to get a nice surface finish on Shapeways SLS parts. The 3D printed components are first cleaned with a toothbrush to free any loose powder, before several stages of primer, sanding, and paint. The final product is then finished with decals that lend the device that perfect factory look. If you’re eager to replicate the build, the parts are available at Github.

[Benoit]’s clock is a great example of what can be achieved by the home builder who is willing to wait a couple weeks for high quality 3D printed parts and decals to ship. It’s not [Benoit]’s first build to grace these hallowed pages, either – his transparent clock runs Linux!

Ask Hackaday: Is There A Legit Use For Operator Precedence?

February 19, 2019 by 111 Comments

Computing is really all about order. If you can take data, apply an operation to it, and get the same result every single time, then you have a stable and reliable computing system.

So it makes total sense that there is Operator Precedence. This is also called Order of Operations, and it dictates which computations will be performed first, and which will be performed last. To get the same results every time, you must perform addition, multiplication, power functions, bitwise math, and all other calculations in a codified order.

The question I’ve had on my mind lately is, does this matter to us or just the compiler?

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Flux Engine Reads Floppies

February 19, 2019 by 49 Comments

It is a bit of a paradox that we are storing more and more information digitally, yet every year more and more of it is becoming harder to access. Data on a variety of tapes and disks that were once common, is now trapped on media due to lack of hardware to read it. Do you have a ZIP drive? Do you have a computer that it will work with? Floppies are problem too. You might think you beat the system just by having a USB floppy drive. While these do exist, they typically won’t read oddball formats. That is, except for Flux Engine, an open source USB floppy drive.

The device uses a $15 Cypress development board and just some wiring (along with a 3.5 or 5.25 floppy drive, of course). Currently, the firmware only supports read only access to IBM standard disks and Acorn DFS/ADFS disks. It can also read and write Brother word processor disks. However, being open source, it could do more. The author, [David Given], is looking for Commodore 1541 and Apple CLV disks to borrow so he can get those working. He’s also offered to entertain other formats if you are willing to loan him a disk.

The software uses libusb and is known to work on Linux and Windows with Cygwin. It should also work with OSX. However, you will need a Windows box of some sort to build the Cypress firmware because the Cypress tools won’t work anywhere else. [David] wants to change processors because of this, but if he does, he’ll miss the PSoC function blocks, we are guessing.

The design is actually rather simple. The firmware only measures the time between flux transitions and sends them to the attached PC. All the heavy lifting occurs on the PC, which means it should be pretty easy to analyze and decode new formats. While writing is possible, it appears there is more work that needs to happen to make it reliable. [David] comments that you really need a real drive to test your writing with so you don’t write things only you can read back. Makes sense.

This certainly is more user-friendly than the last method we looked at. We had to wonder if [David] has thought about 8-inch floppies.

Bell Labs, Skunk Works, And The Crowd Sourcing Of Innovation

February 19, 2019 by 40 Comments

I’ve noticed that we hear a lot less from corporate research labs than we used to. They still exist, though. Sure, Bell Labs is owned by Nokia and there is still some hot research at IBM even though they quit publication of the fabled IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin in 1998. But today innovation is more likely to come from a small company attracting venture capital than from an established company investing in research. Why is that? And should it be that way?

The Way We Were

There was a time when every big company had a significant research and development arm. Perhaps the most famous of these was Bell Labs. Although some inventions are inevitably disputed, Bell Labs can claim radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, Unix, C, and C++ among other innovations. They also scored a total of nine Nobel prizes.

Bell Labs had one big advantage: for many years it was part of a highly profitable monopoly, so perhaps the drive to make money right away was less than at other labs. Also, I think, times were different and businesses often had the ability to look past the next quarter.

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Honda Key Fob Turned CNC Work Of Art

February 19, 2019 by 16 Comments

Now that nearly every car on the road comes with an electronic key fob, people are desperate to find ways to repair these indispensable little gadgets without coughing up potentially hundreds of dollars at the dealership. There’s a whole market for replacement shells which you can transplant your (hopefully) still functional electronics into, but if you’re going to go through the trouble of putting the electronics into a new case, why not make it special?

That’s what [Michicanery] was thinking when he decided to build his own custom key fob. The end result is an utterly magnificent feat of engineering that’s sure to be a conversation for the life of the vehicle, if not beyond. Made of wood and aluminum cut on his OpenBuilds Lead CNC 1010, this build just might inspire you to “accidentally” drop your existing fob from a great height. Oh no, what a shame.

[Michicanery] starts by disassembling his original fob, which is the type that has a key integrated directly into the device. This meant his replacement would need a bit more thought put into it than a separate stand-alone fob, but at least it wasn’t one of the ones where you have to stick the whole thing into the dashboard. To make sure the build was strong enough to survive a lifetime of being turned in the ignition and generally fiddled with, he cut the central frame and buttons out of 1/4″ thick aluminum.

The top and bottom of the fob were then cut from Chechen wood and then chamfered on a table router so it felt a bit better in the hand. He applied oil to the pieces to bring out the natural color and grain of the wood, but not before engraving his own logo onto the back of the case for that extra touch of personalization. Not that we think [Michicanery] is going to have trouble identifying his keys from this point on.

Like the incredible watch cases we’ve seen recently, this is a perfect example of an everyday object getting a new lease on life as a bespoke creation thanks to a custom built enclosure. Granted we’re not sure Honda key fobs have quite the heirloom potential of a good watch, but we’d still prefer it over the black plastic original.

[via /r/DIY]